In The Words Of Famous Jazz Cats ...

[Ron Thorne]

I'll start this thread with the 1st post on this topic from Jazz Corner, one I made in 2003.


"Sometimes you have to play for a long time to be able to play like yourself." -- Miles Dewey Davis, Jr.

"I'll play it first and tell you what it is later." - Miles Davis

"I say, 'Play your own way. Don't play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you're doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years'." - Thelonious Monk.

And for a final quote to begin this new chapter, one for a grin, which we all could use right about now.

"He's no Bill Clinton! " - Benny Carter (following a 1996 jam session with the saxophone-playing King of Thailand)

[Harry]

"My ego only needs a good rhythm section" - Miles

[A. Kingstone]

Don't just do something, sit there.

Jim Hall

[Ron Thorne]

"You can practice to learn a technique, but I'm more interested in conceiving of something in the moment." - Herbie Hancock

"Clouds float in the same pattern only once." - Wayne Shorter

[Ron Thorne]

"Man, That cat is nuts!" - Monk on Ornette Coleman

“I’ve never heard anything Wynton (Marsalis) played sound like it meant anything at all. Wynton has no voice and no presence. His music sounds like a talented high-school trumpet player to me… He’s jazzy the same way someone who drives a BMW is sporty.” - Keith Jarrett

“Reimbursement may be sometimes small, but then great ability can never be measured by the tickets at the gate.” - Eddie Harris

“If you believe, you will. If you don’t, you won’t.” - Eddie Harris

“If there’s any such thing as a perfect man, I think John Coltrane was one. And I think that kind of perfection has to come from a greater force than there is here on earth.” - Elvin Jones

“When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone, in the air, you can never capture it again.” - Eric Dolphy

“Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.” - Max Roach

"Music is the healing force of the universe"- Albert Ayler

[pig pen]

The group I’m working with – Danilo, Brian and John – is not based on any kind of formula, but we have the notion that there’s no such thing as a coincidence or a mistake and that reaching for something called perfection, to perfect what you’re doing – like rehearsing until you get something down – is almost like immersing what you’re doing in liquid hydrogen. It becomes frozen, or statuesque. – Wayne Shorter

[Mike Schwartz]

directly from Jack DeJohnette's FB page

"We had a really good concert in Lyon France tonight.
There were some beautiful song birds that joined us on the
ballad It Never entered my mind.
Keith very delicately interacted with them,even leaving
spaces for them to solo too!
Their melodies were so lovely.It made me smile through
most of the tune."

[Ron Thorne]

Art Blakey on Thelonious Monk:

"I have yet to meet the man who can beat him at chess, or even checkers, or ping-pong. Monk had all the drummers, everybody was so happy to work with Monk. I joined the Giants of Jazz just because Monk was in there, and I had a chance to be around Dizzy and the cats for a minute. We just made the one tour. The cats are stars, and they're set in their ways. We did the one trio date in London ("the two Black Lion Monk LPs"), and he just did it because they asked him to and I did it because I'd do anything they'd ask me to do with Monk.

He was responsible for me when I moved from Pittsburgh to New York. He used to take me and Bud Powell around to all the clubs to play. If the musicians didn't want us to sit in, he'd run them off the stage, sit down, and play with me. At that time jobs were so few, and musicians had cliques. Times were tight, things were changing, but Monk was just outstanding in himself. He's a great person."


"I don't like crowds unless they're paying to see Cannonball." - Julian "Cannonball" Adderley

[Mike Schwartz]

... and Miles joked that because "they play too many f**king notes," they need to go to "Notes Anonymous."

[peterdubya]

From Bill Cosby:
There is a famous cartoon that is famous only in my own mind, and I drew it, and it is dark, like an absence of electricity; human beings are gone. And then in the darkness there is a tombstone: "Jazz." And underneath, all it says is, "It broke even."

[Mike Schwartz]

From Bill Cosby:
There is a famous cartoon that is famous only in my own mind, and I drew it, and it is dark, like an absence of electricity; human beings are gone. And then in the darkness there is a tombstone: "Jazz." And underneath, all it says is, "It broke even."

Did you see this one in the recent Cosby interview article in the Mercury News?

[Ron Thorne]

“I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it … Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don’t you? Because we can hear it in your writing. And I thought that was a compliment.” ― Elmore Leonard

“What is my definition of jazz? 'Safe sex of the highest order.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

“The piano ain't got no wrong notes.” ― Thelonious Monk

[mjb]

"I can live a week without poetry but not a day without jazz." Philip Larkin 1965

[Ron Thorne]

“There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazz__that's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.” ― Keith Richards, Life

“There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly. ” ― Boris Vian

"Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa." ― Art Blakey/Abdullah Ibn Buhaina

[Ron Thorne]

"A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!" ― Cannonball Adderley

"Hipness is not a state of mind, it’s a fact of life." ― Cannonball Adderley

[Ron Thorne]

"When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words." ― Billie Holiday

"Once, when we were playing at the Apollo, Holiday was working a block away at the Harlem Opera House. Some of us went over between shows to catch her, and afterwards we went backstage. I did something then, and I still don’t know if it was the right thing to do – I asked her for her autograph." ― Ella Fitzgerald

"Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing." ― Duke Ellington

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues." ― Duke Ellington

[A. Kingstone]

[steve(thelil)]

All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.

-Thelonious Monk

[bluenoter]

Happy birthday, dear John! You said an earful in #17.




(Thanks, Alan!)

[A. Kingstone]

Happy birthday, dear John! You said an earful in #17.




(Thanks, Alan!)

I love that shot! How John is crouching and digging in and Elvin, McCoy and Jimmy(?) are obviously digging in their way.

I'd never seen this one.

Thank You Rita!

[Ron Thorne]

"One thing I like about jazz, kid, is that I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you?" - Bix Beiderbecke

"I am viewed as the Negro who has gone outside of the categories assigned to me." - Anthony Braxton

"Damn it, when I'm bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic--take it or leave it." - Dave Brubeck

"If it wasn't for hustlers, gangsters and gamblers, there'd be no jazz. Wasn't middle-class who said 'Let's hear Bird tonight.'" - Betty Carter

"I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once." - John Coltrane

[Ron Thorne]

After hearing and playing along to records by Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter, said Eldridge, "I resolved to play my trumpet like a sax." - Roy Eldridge

"I am not interested in compromising my music to make it more palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass." - Don Ellis

"Jazz is a mental attitude rather than a style. It uses a certain process of the mind expressed spontaneously through some musical instrument. I'm concerned with retaining that process." - Bill Evans

"I can play, and I know it; I’m not looking for any pats on the back. I don’t have to be endorsed by anybody. I make enough to live and eat, and I’m happy with my music—and that’s all I need." - Curtis Fuller

[Ron Thorne]

"Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple." - Charles Mingus

[Ron Thorne]

"The essentials of Jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing & instrumental personality." - Mose Allison

"It takes an intelligent ear to listen to Jazz." - Art Blakey

"I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out." - Carla Bley

"Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape." - Gary Burton

[Ron Thorne]

"When I think back now to the recording sessions, there is more improvisation than one hears. It's an ideal combination of arrangements and improvisation. Only a few people are able to listen and say what is composed and what is improvised. It's a unit." - Eberhard Weber

"When I started to pick up the bass, it was purely by random chance." - Eberhard Weber

"Music is a gift and a burden I've had since I can remember who I was." - Nina Simone (1977)

"Once I understood Bach's music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world." - Nina Simone

"You can practice to attain knowledge, but you can't practice to attain wisdom. Without wisdom, the future has no meaning, no valuable purpose." - Herbie Hancock

"The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness." - Herbie Hancock